3 years old

I don’t have many recollections of being three years old.

It was the year that bus segregation came to a head when  Claudette Colvin a fifteen year old African American girl refused to give up her seat in Montgomery Alabama. Elvis Presley and Billy Haley and the Comets are on the airways. The Salk Polio Vaccine was finally approved. West Germany becomes a sovereign country and joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Communist Warsaw Pact is formed. Disneyland opened to the public in Anaheim, California. The Lockheed U-2 made it’s first flight. The first edition of the Guinness Book of Records is published.  The Instanbul Pogrom of the Greek minority population occurs. Nabokov’s Lolita is published.  Juan Peron of Argentina is ousted by military coup. James Dean is killed in car crash in California. Later that year his movie Rebel without a Cause is released. Alfred Hitchcock presents debuts on TV.  The Vietnam War begins. A state of emergency is declared in Cyprus. Rosa Parks refused to obey the bus driver leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  Cytogenecist Tjio discovers 46 is the correct number of human chromosomes.  William c DeMille, screenwriter died. Albert Einstein, Nobel Laureate physicist, born 1879, died on April 18. Thomas Mann, Nobel Laureate, German novelist died. Michael Checkov Russian Actor, writer Director, died. Dale Carnegie, writer and lecturer, died. Rowan Atkinson, Mr. Bean, was born as was actor Kevin Costner and musician Eddie Van Halen. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates founders of Apple were born this year.   American actor Bruce Willis, American Actress Whoopi Goldberg and director Billy Bob Thornton were born this year. 

We were living in the Toronto suburb.  We rented the front room of the two story red brick house to a single older man who smelled of smoke.  I rarely saw him. “Don’t bother him,” Mom would say to us kids.  We had a smal garage out back where dad kept the car. I remember having other kids my and my brother’s age on the street which ended in bushes where we weren’t supposed to go but we sometimes did. 

We went to church as a family.

In summer I remember playing marbles on the sidewalk. My brother, Ron, who was four years older, had made a board that stood up and and had half circles cut out of the bottom edge. The game was to shoot the marbles through the holes.  He was the best at it. We all liked playing it. Down on our hands and knees on the cement aiming.